Ian Paget-Brown, chairman of the Law Reform Commission’s (LRC) committee dealing with the Legal Practitioners’ Bill, blasted the Law Society and the major firms accusing them of being populated by lawyers who no longer had any loyalty to the jurisdiction and did not care about the Cayman Islands.

Speaking on Wednesday (16) at the Grand Court Opening, Paget-Brown said there appeared to be continual resistance from the major firms except for blanket grandfathering of practice certificates to their overseas lawyers without strings when it comes to advancing Caymanians in the profession.

Regulation of the legal profession has been ongoing since 2007 and nothing has so far been achieved as to how local lawyers can be protected from blatant discrimination by some of Cayman’s major offshore law firms.

Paget-Brown said he had received a letter last Friday (11) that suggested these offshore law firms would not give anything in exchange for the automatic issuing of overseas practice certificates for all those lawyers these firms say they need to be able to practice Cayman law overseas for them to stay competitive.

The only response the commission’s request for information regarding how many overseas lawyers would require certificates and in what jurisdictions and practice areas, was received from Charles Jennings, who wanted to know by what authority the LRC was asking these questions. (Mr. Jennings was former president of the Law Society.)

Being forced to undertake its own inquiries, the LRC found:

1,500 lawyers employed by Cayman firms overseas

180 of the above practice Cayman law

24 of the above have been called to the Cayman bar

160+ attorneys with no connection to Cayman require the certificates

It is these 160 the Law Society and major firms want automatically to be given certificates and they don’t even want a requirement they have to actually fly to the Cayman Islands in order to receive it.

The LRC chairman said this was an illustration of the disrespect some of these firms have for Cayman’s legal profession.

These firms have made over S1B over the last 10 years in practicing Cayman law outside this jurisdiction and there must be a way some of it can be channeled towards the development and advancement of Caymanian lawyers.

The LRC had also learned there was an appallingly large extent of discrimination towards the development and advancement of Caymanian lawyers and the profession in the Cayman Islands. Many young local lawyers were unable to express themselves for fear of losing their jobs.

Their plight was being marginalized whilst misleading information was being given by firms to the Cayman authorities in order for work permits to be granted to under-qualified lawyers.

“Lawyers from the major firms are putting their profits ahead of everything, which was a breach of their professional duty,” he thundered. “It is not some on-line boarding pass to a gravy train. It is an honourable profession but they are committed to short term gain.”

Paget-Brown strongly believed the LRC have been wasting their time in trying to modernize the law but he was still of the opinion the profession needed the law and only lawyers based in Cayman should be allowed to practice Cayman law in order to protect the profession.